Search form

Search

United States v. Graham

LEGAL CASE

United States v. Graham

Defendant Aaron Graham was suspected in a series of armed robberies around Baltimore. Without a warrant, police obtained 221 days of historical cell site location information about Graham from Sprint, which detailed 29,000 location points, an average of 100 data points a day. The trial court denied Graham's motion to suppress and he was convicted after a jury trial. On appeal before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, EFF joined the ACLU, the Center for Democracy and Technology and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in an amicus brief, arguing police need a search warrant to obtain historical cell site records from a cell phone provider.

In August 2015, the Fourth Circuit agreed in a 2-1 opinion, ruling there was an expectation of privacy in historical cell site records and requiring police use a search warrant to obtain this information. However, after the government petitioned the Fourth Circuit to review the case en banc (with the full court), the full court overturned the panel decision in late May 2016. The court held that because we share our location information with cell service providers, we lack a Fourth Amendment-protected privacy interest in this very sensitive data. This decision, which follows decisions from four other federal appellate courts, means that now, in the vast majority of states, federal law enforcement agents don’t need to get a warrant to get access to this data from a cell service provider. The defendants in Graham and Carpenter (a similar case from the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals) petitioned the Supreme Court for certiorari (review) in fall 2016. We filed an amicus brief in support of cert.

Protecting the highly personal location data stored on or generated by digital devices is one of the 21st century’s most important privacy issues. In 2017, the Supreme Court finally took on the question of how law enforcement can get ahold of this sensitive information. Whenever you use a cell phone...

Washington, D.C - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged the U.S. Supreme Court today to curb law enforcement’s expansive tracking of suspects’ cell phones, arguing that police must get a warrant before collecting the detailed location data that all phones generate as part of their routine functioning.
The defendants...

Today the Supreme Court announced it will review United States v. Carpenter, a case involving long-term, retrospective tracking of a person’s movements using information generated by his cell phone. This is very exciting news in the world of digital privacy. With Carpenter, the Court has an opportunity to continue its...

The Supreme Court already has a list of digital civil liberties issues to consider in the near future, and that list is likely to grow.
If confirmed, President Donald Trump’s nominee to fill the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court—Judge Neil Gorsuch of the U.S. Court of...